Google now sells Gemini four different ways, and the price map just changed at Google I/O 2026. Google AI Ultra was cut from $249.99 to a new entry price of $99.99 per month, while Google AI Plus stays at $7.99 per month and Google AI Pro at $19.99 per month. On the API side, Google’s new Gemini 3.5 Flash launched on May 19, 2026 at $1.50 per million input tokens and $9.00 per million output tokens. That undercuts the older Gemini 3.1 Pro ($2.00 / $12.00) by about 25% while beating it on coding and agentic benchmarks.
This guide covers every part of Gemini pricing in 2026, fully updated for the I/O 2026 changes. We walk through the restructured consumer plans, the API token rates for Gemini 3.5 Flash, Gemini 3.1 Pro and the rest of the Flash family, the Vertex AI Standard / Priority / Batch tiers, and the bundled Gemini features inside Google Workspace. We also show how Gemini stacks up against ChatGPT, Claude and DeepSeek, plus the simplest way to use Gemini alongside the other top models for one flat monthly fee. For the full benchmark and feature breakdown of the newest model, see our Gemini 3.5 review.
The Key Takeaways
- Google AI Plus costs $7.99/month in the US and rolled out worldwide in January 2026.
- Google AI Pro is $19.99/month and includes Gemini 3.1 Pro with a 1M token context window.
- Google AI Ultra now starts at $99.99/month (cut from $249.99) with 20 TB storage and up to 20x limits; the old top tier is now a $200/month plan.
- Gemini 3.5 Flash launched May 19, 2026 at $1.50 / $9.00 per million tokens, beating Gemini 3.1 Pro ($2 / $12) on coding at about 25% lower cost.
- Google Workspace dropped the standalone Gemini add-on in 2025; Gemini is now bundled in Business Standard, Plus and Enterprise tiers.
- Google AI Studio is free with daily request limits, no credit card required.
What is Gemini pricing?
Gemini pricing is split across four product surfaces, each with its own meter. Consumer subscriptions charge a flat monthly fee for the Gemini app and the broader Google AI suite. The Gemini API is pay-per-token, billed per million input and output tokens. Vertex AI wraps the same models in Google Cloud with extra enterprise tiers. Google Workspace now bakes Gemini into its per-seat plans instead of selling it as a separate add-on.
Prices vary widely between these surfaces. The same Gemini 3.1 Pro that powers a free question in the web app costs $2 per million input tokens through the API. Picking the right surface for your use case is most of the optimization work, and we walk through each one below.
Google Gemini consumer plans 2026 (Free $0, Plus at $7.99, Pro at $19.99, Ultra at $99.99)
Google’s consumer subscription stack has four tiers in 2026. The free plan covers most casual use on its own. The paid tiers stack more model access, more daily prompts, more storage and more agentic features as you go up.
| Plan | Price (US) | Headline model access | Storage | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | Gemini 3.5 Flash, limited Gemini 3.1 Pro | 15 GB | Casual users, quick answers |
| Google AI Plus | $7.99/month | Expanded Gemini 3.1 Pro, 200 AI credits, NotebookLM extras | 200 GB | Light power users, students |
| Google AI Pro | $19.99/month | Gemini 3.1 Pro at 1M context, 1,000 AI credits, Gemini Omni | 5 TB | Most paid users |
| Google AI Ultra | $99.99/month ($200 higher-limit plan on top) | Deep Think, Gemini Spark, Project Mariner, max limits | 20 TB | Power users, agentic workflows |
All four tiers include Deep Research, Gems, Canvas and the Gemini Live voice mode. At I/O 2026 Google also moved paid plans away from fixed daily prompt caps to compute-based usage limits, so a simple text prompt now spends far less of your allowance than a long video or coding session. AI credits power Gemini Omni video, Whisk image edits and Flow filmmaking inside the same subscription.
Gemini Free at $0/month
The free Gemini tier costs $0 and runs at gemini.google.com plus the Gemini mobile apps. You get Gemini 3.5 Flash, the new default model as of May 19, 2026, for general chat, a daily allotment of Gemini 3.1 Pro for harder reasoning, image generation with Nano Banana 2, up to five Deep Research reports per month, and Gemini Live voice mode. Storage is the standard 15 GB on Google One shared across Gmail, Drive and Photos. No credit card and no subscription are required. The free tier is generous enough that most casual users never need to pay, and it doubles as a free testing ground before you commit to a paid plan. And if you do upgrade, our roundup of how to save on AI subscriptions covers the student offers and bundles worth checking first. Students specifically should read whether Google AI Pro is still free for students before paying for any tier.
Google AI Plus at $7.99/month
Google AI Plus is the newest tier. The company brought it to the US on January 27, 2026 at $7.99/month, with 50% off the first two months for new subscribers. The plan launched first in Indonesia in September 2025 and now covers most markets where Google’s AI plans are sold. You get a 128K context window in the Gemini app, 200 monthly AI credits for Flow and Whisk, expanded NotebookLM access and 200 GB of cloud storage shared across Gmail, Drive and Photos. It is the cheapest way into the paid Gemini ladder.
Google AI Pro at $19.99/month
Google AI Pro is the sweet-spot plan for most readers. At $19.99/month (with 50% off for the first year for new subscribers) you get Gemini 3.1 Pro at the full 1M token context window, generous compute-based usage limits, and 1,000 monthly AI credits. The plan also bundles 5 TB of cloud storage, Gemini Code Assist, Gemini Omni for video, and unlimited slide generation. As we covered in our deep dive on Gemini 3.1 Pro benchmarks, this remains Google’s deep-reasoning model, though the new Gemini 3.5 Flash now beats it on coding and agentic tasks at lower cost.
Google AI Ultra at $99.99/month
Google AI Ultra is the maximum tier, and Google I/O 2026 cut its entry price from $249.99 to $99.99/month. The old top allowance now lives on as a separate $200/month plan for the heaviest users. Ultra includes Deep Think for the hardest reasoning tasks, Gemini Spark the new 24/7 background agent, and the highest compute-based usage limits Google offers, which replaced the old fixed daily prompt counts. You also get image generation with Nano Banana 2, Project Mariner for agentic browser control, 20 TB of cloud storage, and full YouTube Premium. At the new price, Ultra targets professionals and creative pros who would otherwise stack multiple subscriptions.
Gemini API pricing 2026 (per million tokens)
The Gemini API is billed per million input and output tokens, with separate rates for cache hits, audio inputs and prompts above 200K tokens. Below are the current rates from the official Google AI Gemini API pricing page. All figures are USD per 1,000,000 tokens at the standard tier.
| Model | Input | Cached input | Output | Context | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | $1.50 | $0.15 | $9.00 | 1M | New May 19, 2026; beats 3.1 Pro on coding and agents |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview | $2.00 (≤200K) / $4.00 (>200K) | $0.20 / $0.40 | $12.00 / $18.00 | 1M | Flagship for the deepest reasoning tasks |
| Gemini 3 Flash Preview | $0.50 (text/image/video) / $1.00 (audio) | $0.05 / $0.10 | $3.00 | 1M | Mid-tier multimodal workhorse |
| Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite Preview | $0.25 / $0.50 (audio) | $0.025 / $0.05 | $1.50 | 1M | Cheapest 3-series model |
| Gemini 2.5 Pro | $1.25 / $2.50 | $0.125 / $0.25 | $10.00 / $15.00 | 1M | Previous flagship, still supported |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash | $0.30 / $1.00 (audio) | $0.03 / $0.10 | $2.50 | 1M | High-volume cheap option |
| Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | $0.10 / $0.30 (audio) | $0.01 / $0.03 | $0.40 | 1M | Cheapest model in the lineup |
Batch mode runs every model at 50% off the standard list price, with a turnaround of up to 24 hours. Cached input drops to roughly 10% of the cache-miss rate on Pro and Flash, which is the biggest single lever for high-volume workloads. Gemini 3.1 Pro launched on February 19, 2026 and the older `gemini-3-pro-preview` endpoint was deprecated by March 9. Gemini 3.5 Flash then launched on May 19, 2026 at Google I/O 2026 (model ID gemini-3.5-flash) with a 1M-token input window and 64K output. Its global rate is $1.50 / $9.00 with $0.15 cached input; non-global regions are billed slightly higher at $1.65 / $9.90.
Gemini 3.5 Flash vs Gemini 3.1 Pro pricing
Gemini 3.5 Flash is the new default for almost everything. It costs $1.50 per million input tokens and $9.00 per million output tokens, about 25% less than Gemini 3.1 Pro ($2.00 / $12.00), and it scores higher than 3.1 Pro on coding and agentic benchmarks like Terminal-Bench 2.1 and MCP Atlas while running roughly 4x faster. Gemini 3.1 Pro still wins the hardest pure-reasoning tests, so it stays worth the premium for deep research and very long-context work until Gemini 3.5 Pro arrives in June 2026.
A worked example: a 100K-token input prompt with a 2K-token answer costs $0.224 on Gemini 3.1 Pro ($0.20 input + $0.024 output) versus $0.168 on Gemini 3.5 Flash ($0.15 input + $0.018 output) at standard rates. Run that job a million times a month and the difference is $224,000 vs $168,000, and 3.5 Flash also returns each answer about 4x quicker. Picking the right model is the single biggest cost lever you have. For a deeper look at how the model line evolved, see our Gemini 2.5 vs Gemini 3 differences breakdown.
How does Gemini API pricing work?
Gemini API pricing has four levers, and each one can save you real money.
- Tokens. Every request is metered in input tokens (what you send) and output tokens (what the model generates). One million tokens is roughly 750,000 English words.
- Context length tiers. Pro and 2.5 Pro switch to a higher rate above 200,000 tokens of input. Stay under that line and you pay half.
- Cached input. Repeated context (system prompts, shared retrieval chunks) is billed at about 10% of the cache-miss rate. Pin your prompts to compound the discount.
- Batch mode. Non-urgent jobs get 50% off every model with up to a 24-hour SLA. Run nightly summaries, classification jobs and bulk transformations in batch.
Free tier rate limits apply on Google AI Studio with daily request and token caps that vary by model, so you can prototype without a card.
Vertex AI Gemini pricing
Vertex AI is the same Gemini models wrapped in Google Cloud, with enterprise extras like VPC Service Controls, customer-managed encryption keys and regional residency. Pricing matches the Gemini API at the Standard tier but adds two new tiers and one important wrinkle: long-context surcharge above 200K tokens.
| Tier | Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview input | Output | When to use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | $2.00 / $4.00 (>200K) | $12.00 / $18.00 (>200K) | Most production workloads |
| Priority | $3.60 / $7.20 (>200K) | $21.60 / $32.40 (>200K) | Latency-sensitive, guaranteed throughput |
| Flex / Batch | $1.00 / $2.00 (>200K) | $6.00 / $9.00 (>200K) | Non-urgent batch jobs (up to 24h) |
Cached input on Vertex Standard is $0.20 / $0.40 per million tokens, the same as the Gemini API. Priority tier costs roughly 80% more than Standard but trades that for tighter latency SLAs and dedicated capacity, which matters for production traffic at scale. Full pricing is on the Vertex AI generative AI pricing page.
Gemini for Google Workspace pricing 2026 (Starter $7, Standard $14, Plus $22, Enterprise custom)
The big change in 2025 was Google dropping the standalone Gemini add-on for Workspace. The old “Gemini Business” and “Gemini Enterprise” SKUs at $20-30 per user per month no longer exist. Gemini is now baked into Business Standard, Business Plus and Enterprise plans at no extra charge, and the per-seat prices were raised to absorb the cost.
| Workspace plan | Price (annual, per user) | Bundled Gemini features | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Business Starter | $7/month | Gemini in Gmail, Gemini app chat | Tiny teams |
| Business Standard | $14/month | Gemini in Gmail, Docs, Meet + NotebookLM | Most SMB teams |
| Business Plus | $22/month | Everything in Standard + advanced security and eDiscovery | Compliance-heavy SMB |
| Enterprise | Custom | Everything in Plus + Gemini at the maximum tier | Large orgs |
The flexible (no-commitment) monthly rate runs about 20% higher than the annual prices above. As Constellation Research reported, Google’s price hike of roughly 17-22% on Business plans absorbed the old Gemini add-on cost. The net effect is cheaper for teams that wanted Gemini and slightly more expensive for teams that did not.
Business Starter at $7/user/month
Business Starter runs $7 per user per month on an annual commitment, or $8.40 on the flexible monthly rate. It bundles Gemini in Gmail and the Gemini app for chat, custom email on your domain, 30 GB pooled storage per user, and 100-participant Meet video calls. This is the entry tier for tiny teams that mostly need email plus light Gemini access, and it is the cheapest legitimate way to put Gemini in front of every staff inbox.
Business Standard at $14/user/month
Business Standard at $14 per user per month on the annual plan is the most popular Workspace tier and the one Google nudges most teams toward. You get full Gemini across Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides and Meet, plus NotebookLM Plus, AI image generation, 2 TB pooled storage per user, 150-participant Meet with recording, and electronic signatures inside Docs. The flexible monthly rate is $16.80 per user. For most SMBs that want Gemini baked into daily workflows, this is the sweet-spot plan.
Business Plus at $22/user/month
Business Plus costs $22 per user per month on the annual plan and stacks compliance and security on top of everything in Standard. You get 5 TB pooled storage per user, eDiscovery and retention via Google Vault, advanced endpoint management, and 500-participant Meet with attendance tracking. The flexible monthly rate is $26.40. Pick Business Plus if eDiscovery, retention or advanced device management are a requirement, not a nice-to-have.
Enterprise (custom pricing)
Enterprise is custom-priced through a Google sales call and is the only tier with the maximum Gemini allowances, S/MIME email encryption, advanced DLP, Identity Premium, and unlimited pooled storage with appropriate usage. Public-record reporting puts the entry Enterprise SKU in the $23-30 per user per month band, but the final number depends on seat count and the add-ons you negotiate. This is the right tier for large orgs with deep compliance, security and identity needs.
Is Gemini free? Free tier and Google AI Studio
Yes, Gemini has a strong free tier. The web app at gemini.google.com lets anyone use Gemini 3.5 Flash, the new default model, for general chat and a daily slice of Gemini 3.1 Pro for harder questions, plus image generation with Nano Banana 2, up to five Deep Research reports per month, and Gemini Live voice mode. Gemini 3.5 Flash is also free in AI Mode in Google Search. There is no credit card or Google One subscription required.
The free Gemini app also includes image editing with Nano Banana, so you can run our 14 Gemini AI photo prompts without paying for any plan.
Developers get Google AI Studio for free at ai.studio. You can call the Gemini API with a free key, subject to per-model requests-per-minute and requests-per-day limits that range from a handful to a few hundred depending on the model. The free tier is generous enough for prototyping, classroom projects and personal scripts. The catch is that free-tier traffic is logged for product improvement; paid keys are not.
How Gemini pricing compares to GPT-5.5, Claude and DeepSeek
| Model | Input/M | Output/M | vs Gemini 3.1 Pro |
|---|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek V4 Flash | $0.14 | $0.28 | ~14-43x cheaper |
| DeepSeek V4 Pro (promo) | $0.435 | $0.87 | ~5-14x cheaper |
| Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite | $0.25 | $1.50 | ~8x cheaper |
| Gemini 3 Flash | $0.50 | $3.00 | ~4x cheaper |
| Gemini 3.5 Flash | $1.50 | $9.00 | ~1.3x cheaper, beats it on coding |
| Gemini 3.1 Pro | $2.00 | $12.00 | 1x baseline |
| Claude Opus 4.7 | $5.00 | $25.00 | ~2-2.5x more expensive |
| GPT-5.5 | $5.00 | $30.00 | ~2.5x more expensive |
Gemini sits in the mid-cheap band, well under Claude Opus 4.7 and GPT-5.5, well above DeepSeek V4. On the consumer side, Google AI Pro at $19.99/month matches ChatGPT Plus and Claude Pro exactly. After the I/O 2026 cut, Google AI Ultra now starts at $99.99/month and undercuts ChatGPT Pro at $200/month, with a $200 higher-limit tier for the heaviest users. For more on how Gemini stacks up head-to-head, see our long-form ChatGPT vs Gemini comparison, or our full AI pricing comparison for the side-by-side across every major tool.
How to optimize Gemini API costs
A few simple moves can cut a Gemini bill by 50 to 90 percent.
- Stay under 200K tokens. Pro and 2.5 Pro double in price above the 200K context line. Trim retrieval results before stuffing them in.
- Pin your system prompt. Cached input on Pro is $0.20 per million instead of $2.00, a 90% discount on every repeated prefix.
- Default to Gemini 3.5 Flash, escalate to Pro. 3.5 Flash beats Gemini 3.1 Pro on coding and agents at about 25% lower cost, so only re-route the deepest reasoning turns to Pro. Most traffic should never touch Pro at all.
- Use batch mode for non-urgent jobs. 50% off every model on Google AI Studio and Vertex with a 24-hour turnaround.
- Pick Standard tier on Vertex unless you need Priority. Priority costs 80% more for guaranteed throughput most apps do not require.
- Try Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite for ultra-cheap classification. At $0.10/$0.40 per million tokens it is the cheapest model Google ships.
Want Gemini without juggling subscriptions? Try Fello AI
Most readers do not actually want to manage four pricing surfaces and three subscriptions. They want to chat with Gemini when Gemini is the best tool, then switch to Claude, ChatGPT, or DeepSeek when those win. Tab-juggling, account-switching and prompt-history fragmentation eat all the productivity gains.
Fello AI is the simplest fix. One subscription gets you Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Perplexity and several other top models in a single Mac, iPhone and iPad app for $9.99 per month. There is no per-token billing, no usage cap to budget around, and no separate account to manage for each provider. Everything lives in one chat window with one shared history.
Why Fello AI works well for Gemini users
The free Gemini web app is throttled, the desktop experience is bare-bones, and the official Mac app only landed in April 2026. Fello AI has shipped a polished Mac-native experience for years. You get prompt history, file uploads, image analysis, voice input and the ability to switch models mid-conversation when Gemini is not the right tool for the next question. If your prompt is better suited to Claude’s writing or DeepSeek’s reasoning at low cost, swap models without losing context. We also keep an up-to-date guide on Gemini for Mac for users who want a Gemini-only setup.
What it actually saves you
Stack the standard subscription cost of the major consumer plans together. Google AI Pro is $19.99/month, ChatGPT Plus is $20/month, Claude Pro is $20/month, Perplexity Pro is $20/month, and Grok is $30/month. That is roughly $110 per month just to cover the headline tier of each. Fello AI compresses the same lineup, plus DeepSeek, into $9.99/month, with 25,000+ five-star reviews across the App Store and Mac App Store. It is the most-loved AI bundle app in the Apple ecosystem.
Conclusion
Gemini pricing in 2026 is the most varied of any major AI lab. The web chat is free, the API starts at $0.10 per million tokens, consumer plans run from $7.99 to $99.99 per month after the I/O 2026 cut, and Google Workspace bundles Gemini in at no extra cost. Pick by use case. Web chat handles free questions, Google AI Pro at $19.99/month is the right call for serious paid use, the API is for software builders, and Workspace covers teams. If you have decided you would rather not use it at all, here is how to turn off Google Gemini completely.
In case you build software, head to the official Google AI pricing page and start with Gemini 3.5 Flash, the new default that beats Gemini 3.1 Pro on coding at lower cost, dropping to Flash-Lite for ultra-cheap bulk jobs. If you want the best Gemini consumer experience, Google AI Pro at $19.99 is the obvious pick. And if you want Gemini alongside Claude, ChatGPT, Grok and DeepSeek in one Mac app for less, Fello AI is the simplest route. For more on what is coming next from Google, see our preview of Gemini 4 release expectations.
FAQ
Is Google Gemini free?
Yes. The Gemini web app and mobile app are free for individuals and include Gemini 3.5 Flash, the new default model, plus a daily allotment of Gemini 3.1 Pro. Google AI Studio also offers a free API tier with daily request limits and no credit card required.
How much does Google Gemini cost per month?
Paid plans are Google AI Plus at $7.99, Google AI Pro at $19.99 and Google AI Ultra starting at $99.99 after the I/O 2026 cut, with a $200 higher-limit plan on top. New subscribers often get promotional discounts of 50% off for the first few months.
How much does the Gemini API cost?
Gemini 3.5 Flash, launched May 19, 2026, costs $1.50 per million input tokens and $9.00 per million output tokens. Gemini 3.1 Pro is $2/$12 up to 200K context, doubling above that. Gemini 3 Flash is $0.50/$3.00 and Flash-Lite is $0.25/$1.50. Cached input is roughly 90% cheaper.
Is Gemini 3.5 Flash free?
Yes. Gemini 3.5 Flash is the free default model in the Gemini app and in AI Mode in Google Search. Developers pay $1.50 per million input tokens and $9.00 per million output tokens through the API, with $0.15 cached input.
Is Gemini included in Google Workspace?
Yes. Google dropped the standalone Gemini Business and Enterprise add-ons in 2025 and bundled Gemini into Business Standard, Business Plus and Enterprise plans at no extra charge. Per-seat prices on those plans rose to absorb the cost.
Is Gemini cheaper than ChatGPT?
At the API level, Gemini 3.1 Pro is roughly 2.5x cheaper than GPT-5.5 per token, and Gemini 3 Flash is around 10x cheaper than GPT-5.5. Consumer plans are nearly identical, with Google AI Pro at $19.99/month and ChatGPT Plus at $20/month.
What is the cheapest Gemini model?
Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.40 per million output tokens is the cheapest model in the API lineup. Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite Preview is the cheapest model in the current 3-series at $0.25/$1.50.
